I’ve seen Gil Shaham in concert three times. Each time, Shaham captivated his audience with his style and his impeccable technique. On this latest CD, Gil Shaham and the Sejong Soloists play Haydn’s Violin Concerto No. 1 and Violin Concerto No. 4 as well as Mendelssohn’s Octet for Strings. I hadn’t heard these pieces before, but this is a CD I’ll be playing frequently. The music is engaging. Shaham says that performing the Haydn Concertos and Mendelssohn Octet with Sejong is “like playing basketball with seven Michael Jordans. It was a privilege for me, sitting there with my graying hair, to try and keep up with their artistry.” Trust me, Shaham more than keeps up with his younger accompanists. GRADE: A

I’ve been on a bit of a Robert Harris tear lately. In the past couple of weeks, I read Harris’ excellent Roman novels featuring Cicero, Imperium and Conspirata. I enjoyed those books so much, I decided to read Harris’ The Ghost which Roman Polanski’s film, The Ghost Writer is based on. The book starts out with our nameless narrator being recruited for a rush job: he has to write the autobiography of Adam Lang (an ex-Prime Minister based on Tony Blair) in a month. Once he agrees to ghosting the book, the reader is swept away to Martha’s Vineyard where Lang and his people are hunkered down. The World Court is considering trying Lang for war crimes. There are wheels within wheels as Harris’ tricky plot leads to a shocking conclusion. After reading The Ghost I can’t wait to see The Ghost Writer. The Ghost is a top-notch political thriller. Don’t miss it! GRADE: A

Most mystery readers have read some Chester Himes, probably Cotton Comes to Harlem. But there are other gems in the Coffin Ed Johnson and Grave Digger Jones saga. One of them is The Big Gold Dream which centers around a large amount of money that leads to the murder of whoever holds it. Coffin Ed and Grave Digger move around Harlem working their stool pigeons trying to get a handle on the nature of these murders as the bodies mount up. A good part of the plot centers around Sweet Prophet’s Temple of Wonderful Prayer. Himes critiques American materialism, religion, race relations, and gender roles. If you’re in the mood for a police procedural with a social consciousness, The Big Gold Dream will fulfill your need.

Beginning in 1970, Pearl London taught a course at the New School in New York City called WORKS IN PROGRESS for almost 30 years where she asked famous poets to visit the class with drafts of their new poems. This book is a series of conversations from those classes, transcripts taken from a series of previously unknown recordings found after London’s death and edited by Neubauer. And who showed up at these classes? Maxine Kumin, Robert Hass, Muriel Rukeyser, Philip Levine, Louise Gluck, June Jordan, James Merrill, Marilyn Hacker, Galway Kinnell, Derek Walcott, Amy Clampitt, Lucille Clifton, Stanley Plumly, C. K. Williams, Molly Peacock, Robert Pinsky, Edward Hirsch, Frank Bidart, William Matthews, Paul Muldoon, Li-Young Lee, Charles Simic, and Eamon Grennan. Pearl London asks insightful questions of these poets to tease out the secrets of writing great poetry. If you’re interested in the creative process and how artists achieve their effects, Poetry in Person reveals some of their special secrets. GRADE: A

If you like Steve Carell and Tina Fey, you’ll like Date Night. Carell and Fey play a married couple mired in tedium. They decide to break out of their mundane existence by going to an exclusive Manhattan restaurant for dinner. However, they find that without a reservation, their hopes of being seated are about zilch. Fate enters the picture at this moment as the hostess calls for “The Triplehorns” and no one responds. Steve Carell finally speaks up and says, “We are the Triplehorns.” Carell and Fey get seated, have a wonderful meal, drink too much, and find themselves accosted by two toughs who are looking for the Triplehorns and a zip-drive full of revealing photos. From this moment on, the movie becomes a screwball comedy with chase scenes and random violence, plenty of shooting and silly plot devices. It’s an entertaining choice for your own date night. GRADE: B

Whether you like James Hynes’ novel Next depends on whether or not you like the book’s unconventional ending. I loved this book up until the last 50 pages. Hynes creates a wonderful character in Kevin Quinn, a 50-year-old editor of an academic journal based at the University of Michigan. Kevin is going through a mid-life crisis and impulsively applies for a job in Austin, TX. The novel describes Kevin’s day from the flight from Ann Arbor to Kevin waiting anxiously for the interview to begin. But, what happens before that–all the soul searching, the analysis of every meaningful relationship in his life–makes Kevin’s story searingly personal. And, funny. Hynes holds nothing back. You get Kevin’s sexual history in intimate detail. That’s why I found the ending a massive cop-out. Hynes’ takes us (and Kevin) to the precipice, but short-circuits the build-up he spent 250 pages developing. I liked James Hynes’ Publish and Perish, The Lecturer’s Tale, and Kings of Infinite Space. Some reviewers are going to proclaim the ending to Next as “bold” but I’m proclaiming it “disappointing.” GRADE: B-

I read Steig Larsson’s The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo a couple years ago and came away annoyed. The novel explores the past of a Swedish industrialist obsessed with a girl who went missing in 1964. The industrialist hires Mikael Blomkvist (played in the movie by Michael Nyqvist), an investigative journalist about to be sent to prison for libeling a financier. Much of the book follows Blomkvist’s detailed investigation. The movie compresses this. What makes the book unusual, and the movie compelling, is the character of Lisbeth Salander (played superbly by Noomi Rapace), a Goth Pippi Longstocking. Lisbeth works for a security firm, but becomes interested in Blomkvist’s investigation. She’s the best hacker in Sweden. Together, Blomkvist and Salander peel back the lies and delusions surrounding the missing girl and discover a horrifying series of murders. The movie captures the graphic sex and brutality of these crimes. Director Niels Arden Oplev follows the convoluted plot of the book, but the movie never drags. The Hollywood version of The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo will sanitize the depictions of these murders. The book annoyed me because of the gaffs in plotting and character. But there’s no denying the power of Larsson’s storytelling. Steig Larsson died as the book was published. He left two other manuscripts: The Girl Who Played With Fire and The Girl Who Kicked the Hornets’ Nest. I’ll be reading and reviewing those novels, too. But, for now, I enthusiastically recommend the movie version of The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo. Noomi Rapace is Oscar-worthy. GRADE: A

Soul Music lit up my life in the Sixties. The Four Tops, the Temptations, Smoky Robinson, the Supremes, and dozens of other Motown artists made up my personal soundtrack in those years. But, Soul Music went away, the magic was gone. The closest thing in the next decade was Disco. And that soon faded, too. Once in a while, an R&B artist emerged who was soulful: Luther Vandross leaps to mind. Now, in the 21st Century, Soul Music seems to be making a mild comeback. It started with the ill-fated Amy Winehouse’s Back to Black and continued with Sharon Jones & the Dap-Kings’ 100 Days, 100 Nights in 2007. Now we have I Learned the Hard Way and you have to pinch yourself to make sure it’s not 1965 again while you’re listening to it. Sharon Jones knows how to sing soul songs and the Dap-Kings know how to play Motown music. If you’re a fan of this musical genre, you’ll love this CD! GRADE: A-
TRACK LIST
1. The Game Gets Old
2. I Learned the Hard Way
3. Better Things
4. Give It Back
5. Money
6. The Reason
7. Window Shopping
8. She Ain’t a Child No More
9. I’ll Still Be True
10. Without a Heart
11. If You Call
12. Mama Don’t Like My Man

Conspirata is the sequel to Imperium which I reviewed a couple days ago in this blog. Marcus Tullius Cicero rules as consul of Rome, but he’s immediately confronted by the murder of a young boy whose throat was cut and whose organs had been removed from his body. Cicero immediately realizes this a ritual murder done as a sacrifice. This ritual murder investigation leads to a large conspiracy to seize power and destroy the Roman republic. Harris captures the political scheming and the tangled electoral relationships among Rome’s power brokers. I hope Harris continues Cicero’s story. Once again, this is historical fiction written masterfully. GRADE: A-

Carter Dickson/John Dickson Carr’s clever The Curse of the Bronze Lamp is the third and last of Art Scott’s recommended “impossible crimes” mysteries. This all started a month ago when I reviewed John Dickson Carr’s The Three Coffins (The Hollow Man) for FORGOTTEN BOOKS. Art argued that The Crooked Hinge, The Judas Window, and The Curse of the Bronze Lamp were superior to the convoluted The Three Coffins. To summarize: I loved The Crooked Hinge and The Judas Window. The Curse of the Bronze Lamp concerns the disappearance of archeologist Helen Loring. Lady Helen had been threatened that she would be “turned into dust” if she brought the sacred Bronze Lamp from Egypt to England. And, as soon as Helen Loring set foot in her home, Severn Hall, she disappeared! Of course, Sir Henry Merrivale is on the scene to solve the mystery. The Curse of the Bronze Lamp is the weakest of Art’s recommended books. I figured out what was going on in short order. But the plot is clever and there are a few surprises. If you’re a devotee of “impossible crime” mysteries, The Curse of the Bronze Lamp will delight you.